


New Music

by SScagnetti



Category: Free!
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 04:15:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3515012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SScagnetti/pseuds/SScagnetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rei is not exactly the world's largest music fan, and Nagisa aims to change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Music

“But Reiiiiiii, that music is borrriing. How can you listen to only that stuff _all the time?_ Don’t you ever want music with some energy? Or, you know, singing?” Nagisa was whining to Rei as both sat in the blonde’s room on a late Sunday night. School was in the morning and as usual Rei was working until the eleventh hour to make sure the project that was due Monday was just right; was just up to _his_ expectations.

Rei sat at Nagisa’s desk writing methodically on note cards in front of him. The project included an oral presentation and for Rei this was both extremely stressful and a matter of pride for him. As it was, he knew he could craft the most articulate, specific, and grandiose presentations any mortal man had ever heard (or so Nagisa's joking embellishments said). He could weave a tapestry of descriptions and arguments to cajole and praise whatever the topic demanded, to a point that the listener would be no doubt enthralled! But then…he had to deliver, personally, whatever speech he created. And that was where the anxiety came in. So many peers no doubt working to find flaws in his work...

Nagisa was laying on his back staring at the ceiling. Whereas Rei was in fairly formal clothes he had changed into after swim practice earlier in the day, Nagisa had kicked off his "outside" clothes almost immediately upon arriving home and now was wearing an extremely bright and overly large t-shirt over baggy shorts, and nearly thigh high socks on his skinny legs. The socks were also oversized, though not baggy. He also had a music player hooked up to earbuds which snaked into one of his ears, as he had one of the buds out so he could listen to Rei. It was this music player that caused the conversation to turn to the topic it was on.

“Why does it bother you so much what genre of music that I like, Nagisa? I am not saying that your music is inferior, I am simply saying that it does not do anything for me.” Rei responded to Nagisa’s huffing and puffing in a calm manner, never moving his gaze up from his work in front of him.

“Because, Rei-chaaaan, I don’t think you have actually listened to enough un-nerdy music to make that decision!” With Nagisa’s implication that his music was “nerdy” in a bad way, Rei finally pulled up from his work and swiveled around in Nagisa’s office chair. He faced the boy and frowned sternly. Nagisa sat up, quietly enjoying that he finally got a reaction out of Rei.

“Well see! You don’t even like my musical tastes! But I don’t get mad at you about that, do I? Even though _you_ clearly haven’t listened to very much of it and call it ‘nerdy’. You know most classical music is the basis for music as we know it today. A-and saying that I need to make some sort of decision I…my music is not nerdy! And for your comment earlier I will have you know there is singing in a lot of classical pieces! Orchestral choruses and-and...” Rei was now the one huffing and puffing. Nagisa frowned a little.

“Aww Reiii,” Nagisa cooed, “I’m sorry. You know I didn’t mean it like that. I just, I dunno, I like most kinds of music but I can only listen to so much of your classical. I like to change it up. I just want us to like more of the same kinds of music is all. That’s why I bring it up.” Nagisa lay back down on the bed, moving to turn up the music in his ears.

Rei sighed; he understood where Nagisa was coming from. It would be nice if they could enjoy music more, especially since Nagisa lived to spend hours listening to music in general. He loved music deeply and Rei saw that. And maybe he really hadn’t tried all that hard to expose himself to new kinds of music. Rei stood up slowly and walked over to the bed and gently sat down by Nagisa’s feet.

“Nagisa,” he began, garnering a quizzical glance from the blonde, “maybe when I finish these note cards for tomorrow I could…try listening to some of the music you have? Maybe I could…see if I am in a more accepting mood from the last time you showed some of your songs to me. Because, yeah, I would like if we could have music we could share too…” Rei trailed off his last words into a whisper and almost felt like blushing. To him sharing music, sitting down with Nagisa and enjoying the same music, seemed sort of intimate. If they found that they had the same tastes somewhere, he could picture the two of them cuddling up on his bed sharing earbuds and tunes and relaxing. That thought alone gave him reason to want to try to find a common taste.

Nagisa grinned and hopped up onto his knees next to Rei. He reached out and gave Rei a warm, close hug. This time Rei did blush.

“That’s all I ask!” Nagisa hummed to Rei joyfully.

 

* * *

 

When Rei had finished up his work, he took a seat across from Nagisa on the bed. The room was no longer lit by the overhead light, but only by the brightly colored glow from the colored shade over Nagisa’s bedside lamp. Rei had been given both earbuds to wear and Nagisa was manning the controls of the player. They sat talking for a while, trying to figure out what kinds of music Rei may like to start with.

“I’m serious Rei; I have just about every genre of music on my player here. You name it I have it! Electronica, any kind of rock music, disco, even dubstep.”

“What is dubstep?” Rei asked, completely oblivious. Nagisa grinned in an evil manner.

“Here, let me show you!” The blonde chuckled as he clicked play on the device he held. In a moment Rei’s expression morphed from a neutral one to that of deep thought.

“Hmm…this is okay so far. Not really my taste, there isn’t a lot of coherence to the melody but it’s not so-“ Rei immediately stopped speaking. His eyes went wide as Nagisa began snickering to himself. The blonde had increased the volume a couple of notches at just the right moment to make the most of things. With one swift motion Rei raised his right arm and stripped both of the earbuds out of place from his head and flung them onto the sheets between himself and Nagisa. He had enough momentum moving back into his body from his sudden jerk that he slid back a few inches on the bed. The bumping of the music was audible from the buds at even Nagisa's distance from them.

“What the FUCK was that?” Rei yelped and cussed, a rarity for how controlled he usually was with himself. His red glasses slid down his nose a full inch and he was too distracted to even fix them. “Nagisa, do you think this is funny?”

The blonde sitting across from him was holding in laughter with all his might. Rei’s sudden disheveled expression and the unique whine his voice took on when he was startled at times like this didn’t help anything. Nagisa eventually burst out laughing.

“What was that, Nagisa? I could have gone deaf! If that was any louder at least. That was entirely unpleasant. I don’t ever want to listen to ‘dubstep’ again!” Rei was calming down, and he finally fixed his glasses. Nagisa calmed his laughter as well.

“ _That_ was a bass drop! That’s what dubstep is all about! It’s dancing music!” Nagisa shifted to sit on his knees as he spoke.

“Yeah well I do not know how anyone could or would dance to..to _that_. And why didn’t you warn me? That was still fairly loud. _And I swear it got louder right before that ‘bass drop’…_ ” Rei whispered the last sentence to himself as he sighed. It was clear to Nagisa he was feeling uncomfortable about this whole thing again. Nagisa felt bad.

“Aww I’m sorry Rei-chan. I shouldn’t have played that, or at least I guess I should have told you. To be honest it’s not usually my kind of music either. But it’s something you have to hear to understand, I don’t think I could have explained it.” Nagisa bridged the small gap between the two of them and gave Rei a big hug. Rei reciprocated it. He wasn’t all that upset, truth be told, but he was a sucker for Affectionate Nagisa.

In a couple of minutes, and after milking a few more reassuring words out of the blonde, Rei again had the earbuds in and Nagisa was listing off genres from his player to see if Rei had even heard of them.

“Electronica? How about that one, Rei?”

“It seems vaguely familiar.”

“I think you might like it. It uses synthesizers and things. Some of it is quite ambient, similar to classical pieces.”

“Okay. Go ahead and play it Nagisa.”

Nagisa did so and for a few minutes Rei sat in contemplative silence listening to the song play. It was a low tempo, almost orchestral piece. Nagisa had picked it especially for these qualities. Rei closed his eyes at one point and even murmured to himself. Nagisa found himself becoming anxious for some reason. As if his choices _had_ to impress Rei. When the song was over, Rei spoke.

“That was pretty good. It was calm, I like that. If it was a little, uhm, faster or, uhm…is louder the word? That wouldn’t be too bad either.” Nagisa nodded, knowing exactly where to take the music next. He queued up the entirety of _Dark Side of the Moon_ and promptly introduced Rei to progressive rock.

Rei quite enjoyed this, and Nagisa was having trouble just showing him the highlights of things as they continued on through the night. Rei wanted to stop and listen to whole albums. Nagisa was excited that they finally were finding things they both liked, but he wanted to keep showing Rei new things. He loved sharing music and getting Rei's reaction to it. Finally they started making an exhaustive and detailed, written list of what genres Rei liked broken down by what bands and what songs and even reasons _why_ Rei liked the song so that later they could go back and listen to them. Rei insisted on the extensive cataloging process.

There were even times when Nagisa was unable to provide information about distinct genres certain bands fell into for Rei and they had to stop everything so Rei could look them up to put down all the details in the novel of a list he was creating. But for most of the time, Rei and Nagisa were enjoying themselves. The teasing to Rei was minimal but nevertheless there; the fact that if he had just opened his mind up before, he could have been enjoying a lot of this music ages ago.

 

* * *

 

Sunday night drew on later and later, approaching early Monday morning. Rei and Nagisa now laid on the bed next to each other, sharing the earbuds (Nagisa had gotten jealous and wanted to listen to his music again). There were few genres Rei had outright discounted as not liking. These were mainly bubblegum pop types (mostly...Rei guiltity did like certain infectiously catchy songs), and music along the lines of the dubstep they kicked things off with. Oddly enough, the harder and more abrasive music like hard rock, punk, and metal had gone over well. There were quite a few songs Rei liked from these genres even more than he had let on.

“You do amaze me Nagisa.” Rei mused to himself as another song faded out.

“Yes I know that, Rei-chan, I know I amaze you. You need to be more specific though. How did I do it this time?” The blonde responded cheekily.

“Well I mean the music you have. You have _so much_ of it. And it is so diverse. How did you amass such a collection?”

“Hmmmmm...I suppose it’s like you and your books or your papers. I have a real passion for it you could say! I enjoy hearing new things and adding them to my ‘collection’. It’s fun!”

Rei smiled and nodded at Nagisa’s words. He was one who loved to collect the things he liked and to know Nagisa did the same was immensely cute to him. He rolled over to face the blonde lying next to him and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. Nagisa giggled.

Before either of the two knew it, it was well past midnight. When Rei noticed this fact, in normal fashion, he panicked and rushed off the bed to pour over his notes for the next day one last time before he essentially fell asleep in a pile of clothes next to Nagisa’s bed. Nagisa, in normal fashion, stayed up for another two hours or so listening to music and enjoying just how detailed of notes Rei had taken on the music, before calling it a night at nearly 3 AM.

 

* * *

 

The next evening Nagisa got an earful after school from a distraught Rei because, during the beginning of his presentation, Rei had gotten nervous and blanked out most of what he was supposed to say and instead could only recall punk rock and JPop song lyrics from the night before. If only he had had more time to study his notes such a catastrophe would have been averted! Rei was upset but Nagisa was immensely proud.

The two agreed that the only way to remedy this situation was by listening to the songs on repeat, cuddled up next to each other, clear through until Tuesday morning.


End file.
